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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26621026">At Last</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface'>thatsrightdollface</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Mentions, Carnival, Dream Logic, Gen, Humanstuck, Insane Clown Posse References, Inspired by Music, Karkat's having a rough time, Swearing, ghost story, gods and angels - Freeform, rot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:20:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,056</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26621026</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was impossible to know how long Karkat Vantas had been shuffling around this carnival.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gamzee Makara &amp; Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara/Karkat Vantas, Others mentioned, with hinted possible</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>At Last</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi!!!  :D  Thank you for reading.  I'm sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made/things I might've messed up.  This was inspired/based off the song "Lost at the Carnival" by Insane Clown Posse... though I definitely gave it a happier ending/made other changes, too.  </p><p>I hope you're doing well!!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was impossible to know how long Karkat Vantas had been shuffling around this carnival — sometimes it felt as if he’d only just recently handed over some crumpled, coat-pocket-sticky bills to get his ticket.  But then other times, it was like...  wait.  Who’d he even come here with, again?  It had been a group of friends, he thought.  This guy Sollux, in town for a couple weeks after moving away for a fancy computer job on the other side of the continent.  Nepeta, wearing a sequined kitty sweater with too long sleeves, hiding her black-painted fingernails.  Feferi, who smelled like chlorine after a day working as a lifeguard.  She’d hurried here to meet them at the after hours, adults-only-so-there’s-booze-everywhere carnival; hadn’t even grabbed some time to shower.  But there was no need to rush.  The carnival wasn’t going anywhere. </p><p>At first, Karkat had waited in line with his friends, and ordered greasy pizza with bottled water and beer in plastic cups.  At first, Karkat had kicked up dust, chasing Nepeta to get his damn phone back.  She’d stolen it to tease him, or something — he’d been choking breathless laughter, a little tipsy, and careening circus music had tangled together with a thousand strangers’ voices.  Everything had been loud, then, and the moon had been huge and swollen like some sort of obscene, untouchable fruit above them all.  Karkat had expected to go back home and kick off his shoes.  No.  </p><p>No. </p><p>The soles of Karkat’s shoes had been worn away a long time ago, like he’d been cursed to dance in a fairytale.  Dance, until your toes are gory stubs.  Dance, until your bones forget what it’s like to hold still inside your seething, trembling skin.  Dance.  Except, instead of any of that, Karkat searched the Hall of Mirrors, and rode the tilt-o-whirl.  Karkat lived off stale-tasting cotton candy, and worried he would forget his friends’ names.  In time.  You know.  There would be more than enough time, if Karkat didn’t find the exit soon.  Which way had he even come from?  The carousel didn’t used to have these faceless, hanging mannequins on it, right?  Creaking as the carousel turned; joints gone rusty from misuse.  Sometimes it seemed like the stall vendors wore faces Karkat really should have recognized.  Sometimes he remembered he should have needed to sleep, probably over and over again by now.  </p><p>There was shaved ice with strawberry syrup, and raspberry, and too-bright, candy-sweet blood.  It was luck-of-the-draw, which one they handed up over the counter.  Karkat reached deeper into his pockets and paid with something squirming there.  He paid with lint and dust and worms; he paid with safety pins and beetles.  Since when was blood <em>sweet</em>, though, honestly?  Well. </p><p>When Karkat said, “This is like a bad dream,” one time...  more to himself than anything, and with a voice like rust flaking off something that hasn’t moved in years...  the stall vendor said, “Then you should talk to Gamzee Makara.  He can change dreams.”</p><p>Karkat cleared his throat, despite the pain of it.  “Where is he?  Gamzee Makara?” he asked.  </p><p>Karkat didn’t really expect to find anyone, mind you.  Faces around here were always changing, and the exit was nowhere to be found.  There had been a parking lot full of cars, just beyond this place — there had been a bus stop, and a bench with gum stuck underneath.  Karkat hadn’t found that bench, and so why should “Gamzee” be any better?  Who the actual fuck could “change dreams,” anyway?  Before he was stuck here — before the carnival — Karkat had been a bit of a cynic.  Nepeta would read him his horoscope and he’d say something snide.  Feferi kept a shrine in the corner of her apartment, worshipping creatures beyond the edges of the stars, horrific and waiting, and Karkat had thought he could never talk about anything with so much reverence.  </p><p>There was a <em>little</em> of that reverence in his voice, now, though, like his legs were turning to shaking jelly and numb at the same time.  Like there were spiderwebs in his hair, and he hadn’t dared to look down at his ruined feet in a long, long while.  And still he was searching.  And still, and still, and still.  </p><p>Karkat had been talkative, once.  He remembered his friends telling him he never shut up.  Just...  these vaguely-comical tirades.  Maybe Karkat could summon words like that up again — a well refilled — if he just got a little sleep.  If he could just...  stop.  But he was lost.  And he needed to leave the carnival.  Didn’t he?</p><p>“Gamzee’s a clown,” the shaved ice vendor said, as if it should have been obvious.  “And this is a carnival, you lucky thing.  Just watch the show.”</p><p>That was it.  That was enough.  Karkat felt a tremor run through his hands, and the shaved ice splattered over his wrists and down to sting his ragged toes.  He screamed, at first without voice or meaning.  He said that this shit right here had to be the stupidest nonsense he’d ever heard: he’d probably seen every inch of this godforsaken carnival a million times, right?  He said that<em> like hell</em> he was going to start interviewing every fucking clown now.  <em>Like hell </em>he was going to believe some dreaming god, some half-awake savior in grease paint could save him.</p><p>This place was a dream, but it was <em>like hell</em> too.  The realization tasted like falling.  </p><p>After he was finished, Karkat realized he’d clamped his fist so tight around the shaved ice that the paper cup was a soggy wad in his hand.  Karkat realized that the shaved ice vendor was staring past him, out at something over his shoulder.  Crowds were milling around him, like usual, only it was almost as if people stepped directly where <em>he </em>was, every now and then.  They didn’t naturally drift out of the way, like water spilling into shape around a mossy rock.  Karkat stood in the human tide for a while, chest heaving.  And then he prepared to push off from the shaved ice stall again, and keep on looking for the exit. </p><p>He didn’t, though.  Instead, he held the ruined cup to his chest and slumped down with his back against the shaved ice stall.  He watched the people stumble by, and chat with their friends, and drag their partners over to the games that offered especially good prizes.  He raised his syrup-stained fingers up over his mouth and thought about going to find the clowns.  About where Gamzee Makara might be performing.  About whether it would be possible to just surrender right here and close his eyes.  A stupid choice, right?  Everybody knew not to fall asleep in public, on a dirty carnival street.  But Karkat’s head felt heavy as the world propped up on Atlas’s back.  That was too lofty, huh?  Karkat’s head felt so strange, it was as if he could hear sirens, and not from very far away.  Sirens everywhere.  Flashing red and blue lights, like the kind Sollux used on his gaming devices.  Like emergency vehicles. </p><p>When Karkat became aware again, there was someone sitting next to him, slurping shaved ice.  His head felt clearer than it had in a long time; the first thing he saw was the heavy orange moon, still looking like poisoned fruit, too full of juice.  It seemed paler, competing with all the lights from below.  Ambulance lights; police cruiser lights.  Karkat watched someone he thought was probably Nepeta cry, and reach for him where he was lying limp on a bloody stretcher.  Squeeze his hand, though — yeah, obviously — he couldn’t feel a thing.  Karkat saw Sollux snap at an officer; Karkat saw Feferi point out where the ride had been tampered with.  Where his cart had gone hurtling off the track.  Karkat sort of remembered it, now.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to remember it completely, mind you.  He looked down at his hands, and they were clean.  His shoes were whole again, if a little dirty; his pockets were full of wadded-up bills, in case his friends wanted to play any carnival games. </p><p>Karkat glanced at the guy next to him, then, realizing he should probably give a shit.  The guy was tall, unreasonably tall, bent over intentionally to be roughly Karkat’s height.  His limbs seemed to have too many joints; he had carefully cheerful clown paint on, and long curly hair that fell into his face, down his back.  It was tied into something ponytail-adjacent with a purple scrunchy.  He gave Karkat a huge, sloppy smile when he noticed that he was awake.  His teeth had been dyed sour green from the shaved ice.  They weren’t human teeth, but Karkat wasn’t as afraid as he should have been, probably. </p><p>“I heard a motherfucker was all up and looking to change his motherfucking dreams,” Gamzee Makara offered.  “It’s normal, for the first one to fucking suck.  One of those ‘reflex’ things, like how your leg’s supposed to kick when the doctor hits it with that — shit — I dunno what it’s called.  Leg-hitting-stick.”</p><p>“The first dream,” Karkat said.  “Fuck.”</p><p>“Sorry it had to ruin the carnival for ya, man.”</p><p>Karkat watched the paramedics load his body into an ambulance, and he knew they were fighting a losing battle.  He knew there was nothing to be done.  He pointed out at the bustling, hopeful lives, though, and Gamzee said, “I fucking <em>wish</em> I could put you back in the game.  Seem like a good guy.  And you’re all kinds of my type, if I’m gonna be honest with a motherfucker.”</p><p>Karkat squinted at him, then.  That...  wasn’t the sort of thing he’d expected from a...  from a <em>dream-twisting spirit</em>, or whatever the hell this was.  An angel of death?  A drawling, crooked-clawed demon?  But maybe it was the sort of thing he could’ve expected from a clown.  Gamzee was waggling his eyebrows, now, after all.  Like it’d just been a joke.  A bad joke, meant to lighten the mood a little bit.  It didn’t work, obviously.</p><p>“Uh,” Karkat said.  He felt like he should be sobbing, now, but all his tears were dried up.  It would hit him sooner or later, he knew.  Tears for Sollux and Nepeta and Feferi; tears for the shows he hadn’t watched yet, and the brother he hadn’t called in weeks, and the unfinished manuscript scribbled in a notebook under his bed.  But here it was, finally: an exit.  A way out of the carnival.  It was a little like finding a note from the tow truck company where you thought your car would be.  Like, it was a step forward, but not without its prices.  It was lukewarm and lonely, but <em>something</em>, at least. </p><p>“What do you wanna dream about?” Gamzee asked.  He asked it in the sort of voice that meant maybe there was no afterlife to climb off to — maybe this was all that was left, in the end.  The dreams.  Until the end of all things, a world full of dreaming ghosts. </p><p>Karkat almost snapped at him, but he’d already screamed himself so raw.  He looked into the clown’s sideways goat-like eyes and said, “I just want to go home.”</p><p>“I can do that, easy, bro.  It won’t be the same.  You know it won’t.  But...”  Gamzee offered a big old theatrical clownish shrug.  What can you do? </p><p>Karkat swallowed.  It was the first time he’d swallowed in ages where he <em>didn’t</em> feel old food clogging his throat, and bugs scurrying in the mushy chest cavity just under his sweater.  He said, “Will you stay with me for a little while?  Once the dream changes?  I...  I don’t want to ask.  But in case it’s horrible.  So I can leave.”</p><p>“Course I will,” Gamzee said.  He squeezed Karkat’s arm, and his fingers were so impossibly cold.  Eerie in an existential way, but Karkat didn’t shake him off.  If anything, he leaned in closer.  If anything, he found himself seeking out this creature’s hand and holding it, for just a second, like whispering <em>thank you </em>without a voice.  </p><p>The carnival grew blurry all around them, until it was gone.  A flickering exit sign in the void.  A bench with gum stuck underneath it, at last, by the bus stop Karkat would never reach.  </p><p>And here’s another dream, brother. </p><p>Goodnight. </p>
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